2006/8/4, Manuel Lemos <mlemos@xxxxxxx>:
Hello, on 08/03/2006 05:18 PM Martin Alterisio said the following: >> Anyway, you may want to read this more in depth reflection of the state >> of the PHP framework world and recommendations on how to pick what suits >> best for you: >> >> http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/52-Recommended-PHP-frameworks.html > > > Sorry to intrude with my usual obnoxious behaviour, but this is starting to > affect my self-esteem (what's left of it). Am I the only one who has a > really hard time reading the blog posts in phpclasses.org? Everytime a > reference to this blog is posted I lose track of the discussion, because I > can't really grasp what Lemos is talking about. > > I'd like to make some some constructive criticism, not just to Lemos but to > the community in general, since I think many of us need to improve our > writing skills: > > 1 - Don't make loooong boooring posts. This blog in reality is the site monthly announcement newsletter. Some months there is more to tell than in others. I usually put a list of contents when the post is about many subjects.
Then maybe you should consider making it a _weekly_ announcement newsletter, 'cause some of those posts are really really too long to digest in only one shot.
2 - Get to the point. Introduction are great when they are not two pages > long. I don't know what you mean by introduction. Usually there is a summary that goes in the RSS feed that is no longer than 3 or 4 paragraphs.
I mean all the things you need to say before actually getting into what you want to talk about. Just take for example the post about "recommend php framework", look how much you have to read before actually get any info relating directly to php frameworks. Is true that there are many things to say before about frameworks hype, but couldn't it be explained in less words?
3 - Stick to the topic. Or use appropiate titles. > 4 - If the topic is inherently long, use distinguishable headers and > subheaders. It's a pain in the ass to read a 5 pages long article that > looks > the same everywhere, with no easy way to know what is the subtopic of what > are you reading now. As I said, these posts often cover many topics. It may not seem by topic sections use titles. The problem is that this newsletter posts used to go by e-mail to the site subscribers in plain text, so there was no way to format titles.
I was unaware of that, I understand now. It's really a pain in the ass to format a text only email for proper reading.... even more if the same text has to be used in a website. Anyway, now that you mentioned it I applied an additional regular
expression to add title formatting when presenting it in the site. Just let me know if it looks ok now.
Yeah, I saw that. I believe it's a little bit better now.
5 - Don't talk so much about your life! You can always make another blog > for > that... Unless your personal experience can bring an unique insight of the > point you're trying to make. I suppose you may be talking about other peoples blogs. Personal blogs are supposed to be personal. This is the PHPClasses site blog. Usually it covers matters about the site developments and matters of interest to the site users. It does not talk about my life. It may talk about my experience when it is relevant to the post topic.
Generally speaking, yes, I'm talking about other peoples blogs. I'm sick tired of all the holy crusades out there, specially when it comes to Web2.0evangelists. You may have not noticed it but somewhere here or there you let your subconcious write for you, specially on the topic of Web2.0 (I used the term twice already, please stop me before I have to pay royalties to O'reilly). It may be just an adjective, but that's all it takes to make a mildly objetive point of view turn into a completely subjective point of view. Just check your article about "is php ready for ..." *that thing I said before*, and you'll see that how, without noticing it, personal feelings tend to appear and change the article completely. Probably that's what made you write so much about how you believe phpclasses.org is a *that term* enabled site, and why. Was all that really necesary for the purpose of the article? Or you were just uncounciously trying to prove something to all those lamers out there? Does it really matter if your site is "in" or "out"? We are not fashion designers...
